After the "Manif pour tous" [Demo for all, mass protest against gay marriage], which included numerous military officers and families of ordinary soldiers in its ranks, the Defence department says it is taking "very seriously" the change in mood emanating from far-right Catholic traditionalist milieus and which is being taken up by some NCOs. The intelligence services have placed this fringe group - a minority, but very visible after the anti-gay marriage demos - under surveillance.

The "Revue de l'Arsenal", a far-right military publication, calls on high-ranking officers in the French army to provoke a coup d’État in France, in 2013. Jean-Dominique Merchet, the best-informed journalist in France in military questions, revealed this information on his blog in a post titled: "The far-right which fantasises about a military coup d’Etat." He explains there: "A royalist group which claims to be part of the "French Spring" is calling for a "coup de force" from Catholic officers. Galvanised by the demonstrations against gay marriage gay, in the "catholic-traditional" far-right, some have shown a wish to go a bit further...

What do we learn from the blog of Jean-Dominique Merchet? That certain members of the miltary, including some at the very summit of the state, are said to exhibit seditious tendencies. And Jean-Dominique Merchet gives names. The affair originates in a military magazine called the "Revue de l'Arsenal" which, in an article discusses "the great discontent" and which contains a call for a putsch. Extremist and traditionalist groups gravitate around this magazine: the French Spring, the Black Lily (and the 6 May movement unknown until now) which are distinguished by their never-give-in attitude towards homosexual marriage.

"It's not the call for a putsch that is judged worrying in itself, but the fact that several renowned Catholic generals are, for now, presented as the tips of the spear in a struggle against the "Freemason-dominated" cabinet of the minister Jean-Yves Le Drian: Benoît Puga, chief of staff of the president of the republic François Hollande, Pierre de Villiers, major general of the armed forces, and Bruno Dary, former military governor of Paris who left his active functions a year ago," says the Saturday edition of Le Monde in a very detailed article on the subject.

Questioned by la Dépêche [a newspaper] this Saturday, Jean-Dominique Merchet adds: The soldiers "who are not part of this movement are congratulating me for having written an article about it, but those in the French Spring movement are not happy about it. There are 250,000 members of the military in the country, but the "Black Lily" is a tiny minority that aims to have an impact on the others, because it is very active."